ANA Members of the Board, Wings
Commanders, Squadron Commanding Officers, Members -

Over the last
week or so, there have been a few articles and reports on US-China
relations, one of the most recent being an article in the
Washington Post this Tuesday last that covered a May speech
critical of U.S Foreign policy by a Rear Admiral of the Chinese
People’s Liberation Army.

Our Chairman
Emeritus, ADM James L. Holloway, III, USN (Ret) has written the
Post regarding that article and the situation in general.

Both are
provided. For continuity, the Post article is first; ADM
Holloway’s ‘reply’ is second.

On May 24 in a vast meeting room
inside the grounds of the state guesthouse at Diaoyutai in Beijing,
Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army rose to
speak.

Known among
U.S. officials as a senior "barbarian handler," which means that
his job is to deal with foreigners, not lead troops, Guan faced
about 65 American officials, part of the biggest delegation the
U.S. government has ever sent to China.

Everything, Guan said, that is
going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China.
Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the
United States. Guan accused the United States of being a "hegemon"
and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The
official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China's
nemesis, Taiwan -- Guan said these prove that the United States
views China as an enemy.

U.S. officials have since
depicted Guan's three-minute jeremiad as an anomaly. A senior U.S.
official traveling on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's
plane back to the United States dismissed it, saying it was "out of
step" with the rest of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
And last week in Singapore, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
sought to portray not just Guan, but the whole of the People's
Liberation Army, as an outlier intent on blocking better ties with
Washington while the rest of China's government moves ahead.

But interviews in China with a
wide range of experts, Chinese officials and military officers
indicate that Guan's rant -- for all its discomfiting bluster --
actually represents the mainstream views of the Chinese Communist
Party, and that perhaps the real outliers might be those in China's
government who want to side with the United States.

Guan's speech underscored that
31 years after the United States and China normalized relations,
there remains a deep distrust in Beijing. That the United States is
trying to keep China down is a central part of the party's
catechism and a foundation of its claims to legitimacy.

More broadly,
many Chinese security experts and officials view the Obama
administration's policy of encouraging Chinese participation in
solving the world's problems -- including climate change, the
global financial crisis and the security challenges in Iran and
North Korea -- not as attempts to elevate China into the ranks of
global leadership but rather as a scheme to enmesh it in a
paralyzing web of commitments.

"Admiral Guan was representing
what all of us think about the United States in our hearts," a
senior Chinese official, who deals with the United States
regularly, said on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak with a reporter. "It may not have been
politically correct, but it wasn't an accident."

"It's silly to talk about
factions when it comes to relations with the United States," said a
general in the PLA who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"The army follows the party. Do you really think that Guan did this
unilaterally?"

China's fear of the United
States was very much on display this past weekend during the
Shangri-La Dialogue, where Gates and his Chinese counterparts
clashed repeatedly throughout the program.

Gates said it was unnecessary
for the PLA to hold the military relationship hostage because U.S.
arms sales to Taiwan are, "quite frankly, old news." The United
States has provided military assistance to Taiwan since 1949, when
the Nationalist government of China fled to the island after the
Communist victory on the mainland; this assistance did not stop
when Washington normalized relations with Beijing in 1979.

"You, the Americans, are taking
China as the enemy," countered Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu. Zhu rose to
prominence in China in 2005 after he warned that if the United
States came to Taiwan's defense in a war with China, Beijing would
abandon its "no first use" doctrine on nuclear weapons and attack
the United States.

In January, Washington announced
a $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan, prompting China to
downgrade its military ties with the United States. China's stance
on the issue is part of a concerted campaign to change a foundation
of U.S. policy in the region -- its security relationship with
Taiwan. At the very least, Chinese officials said, they want the
Obama administration to reiterate a commitment it made in a joint
communique with China in 1982 to decrease arms sales to Taiwan.

The U.S.
framing of Guan's speech and the entire PLA as being out of step
with the times is significant, analysts said, because the Obama
administration could fall into a trap of expecting more from China
than it can deliver. On the plane back to the United States, for
example, U.S. officials predicted that despite Guan's outburst,
China would welcome Gates and that it would also begin to side with
South Korea against North Korea following the release of a report
in Seoul implicating the regime of Kim Jong Il in the deadly
sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26. China did neither,
and interviews with PLA officers indicate that the military is
highly suspicious of the South Korean report.

U.S. officials have also
expressed the hope that China would work harder to press Iran, for
example, to engage in talks on its nuclear weapons program. The
United States also wants China's cooperation on slapping new
sanctions on Tehran. China has shown more flexibility on this
issue, but it is still unclear whether it will ultimately support
sanctions.

Chinese analysts say the Obama
administration ignores what China calls its "core national
interests" -- especially U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan -- at its
peril.

"For years, China has opposed
arms sales to Taiwan among other things, but we were never strong
enough to do anything about it," said Cui Liru, the president of
the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a
think tank run by the Ministry of State Security. "But our national
strength has grown. And it is time that the United States pay
attention."

"This is not just a talking
point that can be dismissed by your government," he continued. "It
is something that must be dealt with or it will seriously damage
ties."

&&&&&&++++++++++END OF ARTICLE
++++++++++&&&&&&

REPLY BY ADM
JAMES L. HOLLOWAY, III

Admiral, U.S.
Navy (Ret.)

CNO 1974-1978

Gates on
China

With reference
to the piece in Tuesday’s Washington Post regarding China’s outlook
at U.S. interests in the Pacific, the critical influence on this
nation’s foreign policy is the number of aircraft carriers and
their associated carrier striking groups in the active fleet of the
United States Navy . Today and into the future, this country will
go to war with no more than the carrier force in being when the
shooting starts. In the Korean War, when the successful outcome of
that conflict was dependent upon the available airpower that could
be brought to bear against the Chinese invaders, the U.S. Navy was
able to triple the size of its carrier fleet by bringing back World
War II Essex Class ships out of mothballs and manning them
with World War II veterans from the Naval Reserve. Today there are
no carriers in mothballs available for mobilization. It takes five
years to construct a large deck carrier even with the highest
priorities. Therefore the carrier force in being must be capable of
supporting the nation’s foreign policy in the most critical
scenarios.

A particular
area of concern is the question of China. Our foreign policy for
decades has been to support the independence of Taiwan, and the
U.S. Government has been quick and positive to react whenever the
status quo of Taiwan has been threatened. In October of 1958 the
U.S. Seventh Fleet was reinforced to seven carriers which were
deployed to the Straits of Taiwan to deter the mainland Chinese
from their threat to occupy the Taiwan affiliated offshore islands,
Kemoy and Matsu. The Chinese Communists backed down as a result of
this confrontation with US Naval carrier aircraft maneuvering in
the Chinese claimed territorial waters. They ceased their
artillery bombardment and withdrew all threatening gestures toward
the offshore islands.

However the
situation that existed in the ‘50’s, has changed. Intelligence
analysts from multiple sources, agree that China is building a
modern navy of nuclear submarines, missile ships and supersonic
maritime strike aircraft, and long range missiles on an accelerated
basis. Considering China’s long land border with Russia and India,
and the lack of any Japanese navy – only a maritime self defense
force – China’s new navy can only be for the purpose of confronting
the U.S. Navy. In any Sino-U.S. confrontation in the western
Pacific the U.S. carrier strike groups would be our main source of
military power. Our Expeditionary Strike Forces with their smaller
helicopter carriers carrying only a small number of VSTOL fighters,
could not survive in the Western Pacific against the Chinese
land-based air without the cover of carrier-based air superiority
strike fighters to establish local zones of air and maritime
control. Basing U.S. Air Force aircraft on Taiwan airfields would
not appear to be an option because they would be within range of
China’s new long range missiles launched from mainland sites. As
immovable targets, the Taiwan bases would be completely
vulnerable.

Such a
conflict with the People’s Republic of China need not occur, but
only if the U.S. is able to dissuade the mainland Chinese from
encroaching on our vital interests. To deter the PRC, the U.S. must
maintain a realistic capability to defend our trade and political
interests on the Pacific Rim by superior military forces. This
capability resides only in the carrier striking groups of the U.S.
Navy. It could be disastrous to even suggest a threat of nuclear
weapons. The potential of a miscalculation on the part of the
Chinese or ourselves could lead to an attempt at preemption,
resulting in a nuclear exchange. This would result in a nuclear war
with the Chinese whose ballistic missiles could cause the
destruction of American cities and industries.

Taiwan and our
vital trade and political interests in the Western Pacific can best
be defended by deterring People’s Republic of China (PRC) from
conflict, by maintaining the threat of intercession from a force of
aircraft carrier striking groups in sufficient strength to achieve
air and maritime superiority wherever challenged on the Pacific
Rim.

The U.S.
experience during the Cold War in the Pacific encompassed two major
wars, in Korea and Vietnam. Both were resolved in our favor by a
strategy that in its initial stages depended upon forward deployed
U.S. Navy carrier battle groups to establish an immediate U.S.
presence in the theater of operations. Recent studies carried out
by the Center for Naval Analysis conclude compellingly that
carriers smaller than the Nimitz Class ships do not have the
capability of supporting the requirement to provide tactical air
cover over an objective area 24 hours per day at a distance of 500
miles. Only a carrier of Nimitz’ size has the deck size and
the facilities to operate sufficient combat aircraft to maintain a
minimum number for around the clock coverage over the target
indefinitely.

Because of the
great expanses of ocean involved, the current force level of eleven
or twelve large deck nuclear carriers is the minimum for keeping
three carrier striking groups deployed to the western Pacific and
maintaining the other commitments of the existing global strategy
of “from the sea”.

Secretary
Gates has demonstrated his clear grasp of America’s requirements to
effectively implement this nation’s global strategy by confirming
the continuation of the eleven carrier force level.